Global energy crisis highlights meagre oil buffers in developing world

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As the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz drives the worst energy crunch in modern history, leading governments to scramble to unload their emergency oil stockpiles, developing countries are among the least prepared to mitigate the shock.

Although surging fuel prices due to the fallout of the US-Israel war on Iran have impacted most of the world, import-reliant poorer countries are among the worst affected and the most lacking in energy reserves to cushion the blow.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based body tasked with ensuring the global oil supply, is comprised exclusively of the industrialised countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Established in 1974, when developed Western countries accounted for the bulk of global oil consumption, the IEA’s 32 member countries represent only about 16 percent of the world’s population.

While the agency’s coordinated release of 400 million barrels of emergency reserves in March was aimed at easing prices globally – theoretically benefitting all countries – the move highlighted the lack of stockpiles across much of the Global South.

Apart from the Middle East and Central Asia, the epicentre of the conflict, the Asia Pacific region, where many economies are heavily reliant on imported fuel, is expected to take the biggest economic hit.

In its latest forecast last month, the Asian Development Bank downgraded its 2026 growth outlook for the region’s developing economies to 4.7 percent, down from an earlier estimate of 5.1 percent.

Developing countries are among the “least able to pay the premium” of building up oil stockpiles, making them especially vulnerable to price shocks, said Khalid Waleed, a research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, Pakistan.

“Strategic petroleum reserves are expensive to build, fill, finance, rotate, and govern,” Waleed told Al Jazeera.

“For countries facing foreign exchange constraints, debt servicing pressures, food import bills, electricity subsidies, and social protection needs, holding millions of barrels of oil in storage can look like a luxury, even when it is strategically necessary,” Waleed said.

Estimating oil stockpiles across countries is difficult due to patchy data.

IEA member countries are required to maintain oil stocks equivalent to 90 days of their imports as a buffer against price shocks.

As of March, member states held a total of 1.2 billion barrels in public reserves, with a further 600 million barrels held by private industry under government mandates.

While the IEA represents less than one-fifth of the global population, several non-IEA members also hold large stockpiles.

China is estimated to maintain about 1.4 billion barrels of emergency supplies, more than the combined reserves of the US, Japan, the European members of the OECD, and Saudi Arabia, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Other non-IEA members with substantial stockpiles include India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.

According to IEA estimates, the 10 countries or blocs with the most reserves account for 70 percent of global stockpiles.

Those 10 – including China, the US, Japan, India and the OECD’s European members – together account for roughly half of the global population.

As the economic influence of countries such as China and India increased in recent years, the IEA’s sway over oil prices diminished, leading to greater risks to global energy security, said Andreas Goldthau, an energy expert at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt in Germany.

“The smaller the share of OECD nations in global demand, a function of reduced oil intensity at home and demand growth abroad, the smaller the share of the market organised under the IEA, and its joint emergency management mechanisms,” Goldthau told Al Jazeera.

“Put differently, the global oil market faces the growing challenge of an ever-smaller group of nations effectively buffering market swings,” he said.

Though many governments do not release data on their oil stockpiles, Claudio Galimberti, the chief economist at the Houston, Texas-based Rystad Energy, estimates that more than 70 percent of the world’s population lives in countries that lack sufficient buffers.

Countries should aim to maintain reserves for 120-150 days, Galimberti said, more than the IAE’s 90-day requirement, to manage energy price shocks more easily.

“Strategic petroleum reserves are a matter of national security,” he added.

‘Strongest long-term defence’: Renewables

In many parts of developing Asia, where economies are highly reliant on fuel imports, officials’ public statements have made it clear that existing buffers fall well below the IEA standard, leading to energy shortages.

In an interview with Samaa TV late last month, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Energy Ali Pervaiz Malik said the country only had crude oil reserves to last five to seven days. Meanwhile, officials in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam have, in recent weeks, provided estimates that their current stacks cover a period of just 23 days to one month.

Neil Crosby, the head of research at Sparta in Singapore, said that many developing countries not only lack the financial means to build up strategic reserves but also suffer technical problems, such as grid failures and inadequate domestic refining capacity.

This means they are ill-equipped to maintain large crude oil stores that could otherwise help keep a lid on fuel prices and, in turn, those of daily necessities, such as food, he said.

While the Global South could mitigate some of the overheads of building up their reserves by partnering with the private sector, governments will also need to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels over the coming years, Crosby said. This would require costly investments in green energy to make the shift.

“Ultimately, the strongest long-term defence is accelerating renewable energy projects to permanently decouple local power generation from the international oil market,” Crosby told Al Jazeera.

Though developing economies could benefit from greater international cooperation on energy, energy crises in these countries are often exacerbated by “anti-free market” policies, said Adi Imsirovic, a veteran oil trader who lectures at the University of Oxford.

“Fossil fuel subsidies, price caps, and controls and the like are the main cause of shortages and waste of precious fuel,” Imsirovic told Al Jazeera.

Some analysts have argued that the fallout of the US-Israel war on Iran makes it evident that new mechanisms to manage the stockpiling and distribution of global energy supplies are needed to ensure more stable prices.

At present, IEA membership is restricted to members of the OECD, ruling out the inclusion of such major economies as China and India – though both are among 13 “association” countries that collaborate with the body on energy-related issues and can participate in most of the agency’s meetings.

Rystad Energy’s Galimberti said the energy crunch is likely to spur developing countries to push for a greater say in the management of global stockpiles.

“It is essential these countries join either the existing IEA or form a new body to defend their national security,” he said.

Rather than creating a rival to the IEA, the Global South could pursue regional agreements on issues such as cross-border electricity trade, emergency energy sharing, and joint financing for strategic infrastructure, said Waleed of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

“South Asia, ASEAN, Africa, and small island developing states could all benefit from such arrangements,” he said, referring to the Association for Southeast Asian Nations.

Still, efforts to provide alternatives to the IEA would likely face practical limitations, said Crosby of Sparta.

“In reality, these blocs often struggle with internal alignment, as mixing net-importers and net-exporters creates fundamentally conflicting economic goals during price swings,” Crosby said.

“And what’s more, regional supply-sharing agreements offer limited protection during a synchronised global shortage, as an entire regional bloc may find itself simultaneously without excess product to share,” he added.

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